Darling (18 page)

“But in this case the slashing was the only thing,” Lind said.

“Was anything missing from the apartment?”

“I don’t know.”

“Again, it’s hard to speculate, but throat slashing is a quick, silent way to kill. In an apartment building
, with plenty of people around, it would make sense to use stealth. It could be means to another objective, like theft. But I doubt Laura Vatanen had anything in her apartment valuable enough for anyone to kill for. Somehow I feel—and it’s just a hunch—that one way or another it had to do with a sudden rage resulting from something related to sex. The way she was killed would fit that the best.”

“Imagine I’m Laura Vatanen, and I’m standing in the living room. You stand up, too.”

Römpötti stood up. They had a few feet between them.

“Let’s imagine you’re holding a knife,” Lind continued.

“Okay.”

“If you attacked me from where you’re standing, how would you do it?”

Römpötti jumped forward quickly. She started low and swiftly punched Lind in the ribs. Lind didn’t have a chance to react and let out a grunt.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“That’s alright,” Lind said. “That’s the sort of attack I was picturing. Now do the same thing, only go for my throat.”

Römpötti stepped back and this time tried to go for Lind’s throat. She could only get half way, when Lind put up her arm.

“Did Laura Vatanen have injuries from trying to block the attack?”

“None
that I know of.”

“So a
frontal attack to the throat would be difficult, and it would be natural to stab, not slash. Laura might’ve been able to block a slashing motion, but a sudden stab would definitely hit her somewhere.”

“Slashing the
throat from behind would be a more natural motion,” Lind observed.

“But if they were in the middle of a big
argument, it’s not likely that Laura would’ve turned her back,” Römpötti said.

“Especially if the fight was
about sex, or the lack of it, a woman wouldn’t turn her back and give the man a chance to attack.”

“Like I said before, without pictures of the crime scene this is mere speculation,” Römpötti said. “But it does seem that Lau
ra Vatanen was taken by surprise; she wasn’t expecting the attack.”

Lind thought about getting a reconstruction made for the court. But first she’d have to figure out how that would help
Korpivaara.

CHAPTER 17

SATURDAY, 10:10 A.M.

LEPP
ӒVAARA, ESPOO

Takamäki sat at the table reading a newspaper, his coffee steaming in front of him. The room was so quiet he could hear the clock ticking on the wall. He had pulled on a pair of sweats, and noticed the stubble showing up on his cheeks. His legs still felt the strain of last night’s jog. After the run he’d taken a sauna and watched a movie on TV.

He looked out the window into his backyard
—the white snow brightened the darkness of the early winter. The sun had been up for an hour, but it hadn’t made it much above the horizon.

He scanned the headlines, and
quickly turned to the real estate ads. There usually weren’t many on Saturdays. Takamäki had been planning for some time to move. His wife died in a car accident eighteen months ago, and his older son was attending college in Vaasa, a few hours away. The younger one was doing his one-year mandatory military service, so at the moment Takamäki lived alone in his townhouse in the Leppävaara neighborhood of Espoo.

He was okay with being alone most of the time,
but sometimes he still missed his wife dearly.

A new relationship would’ve perked up his mundane life, but twenty years of marriage had left him
timid. He wasn’t meeting any good prospects at the police station, in grocery store lines, or on the jogging trails. And if he had, he wouldn’t even have known how to start a conversation.

His
work had taught him to be suspicious of everyone, and now that included himself.

Takamäki figured he could get around four hundred thousand euros for his house, and that would be more than enough to get a one-bedroom somewhere in the city, or maybe in Töölö. He could sell his car, too. Until now, all of these decisions had been made based on
family needs, and it was hard when he realized that it was no longer necessary to consider others’ needs.

A fifty-year-old, a jogger, a policeman, and a widower. Th
at’s how he defined himself, but not necessarily in that order. He found it interesting that Kaarina’s death and the boys’ moving out hadn’t altered the first three definitions at all, but the fourth had definitely hit him hard. Some things you never pay enough attention to until they’re gone.

Takamäki had considered describing himself in those terms on a dating
website, but luckily had come to his senses. Even if the Finnish prime minister had looked for love online, it didn’t necessarily mean that a detective should.

Takamäki turned the page, skipped the car ads, and ended up on the last page. He wondered what was on TV. He still
subscribed to several movie and sports channels that he had ordered for the boys when they still lived at home, but now he was thinking about cancelling. Nowadays he only watched the news on TV, and even that had become strange, just like his interview with Römpötti yesterday. He knew the police administration would require an explanation, but Joutsamo had taken care of it.

He thought again about the movie channels. Was making up his mind on such a small thing as this so difficult because it required a decision? A decision that would confirm his loneliness, that is.

The ring
tone of his phone jolted Takamäki from his thoughts. His unit was on call for the weekend. Even though the new system included a lieutenant on call at the station, Takamäki knew that Joutsamo would call him if anything significant came up.

The call was from an unknown number.

“Hello,” Takamäki said.

“Is this Detective
Lieutenant Takamäki?” a male voice asked. The man, who sounded like he was in his fifties or sixties, spoke with a marked Finnish-Swedish accent, and Takamäki could tell he wasn’t one of the usual anonymous tippers.

“Yeah,” Takamäki confirmed. “It’s me. Who’s calling?”

“Never mind who, but I wanted to warn you to watch your back.”

Takamäki wondered if this was a threat.

“What do you mean?”

“Yesterday you were on the news
about a homicide case.”

“That’s right,” Takamäki replied. He guessed the caller was a
native Swedish speaker.

“It’s about the female lawyer, Nea Lind.” The caller s
aid her name with disdain.

“What about her?”

“That’s exactly the sort of thing you could expect from her. She goes on TV and starts talking garbage. Claims the police are wrong. Why would the police say the man confessed if he hadn’t?”

“Yeah…” Takamäki said slowly.

The man got the hint to fast forward.

“I’ll get to the point. I knew Nea Lind when she worked for a large business law firm and even back then she had noticeable gaps in her professional competence. She seems to be traveling down the same path, so I would urge you to be careful in your dealings with her.”

“You worked for the same firm?”

“I didn’t say that,” the man retorted, but Takamäki knew from the answer that this was the case.

“But thank you for calling.”

“Wait. One more thing. There’s something
strange about Lind’s past. I tried to investigate, but could never quite get to the bottom of it. She’s from Western Finland, and something must’ve happened there. Unfortunately I don’t know what, but the police have better resources for investigating.”

Takamäki knew that jealousy and
long grudges were common among lawyers, but even so he was surprised to receive an anonymous call of this nature.

“We’ll look into this if it becomes necessary. Thank you for calling,” Takamäki said and hung up.

He had never met Lind at the station because Joutsamo had taken care of the meetings with Korpivaara. He opened his laptop and searched for “Nea Lind, attorney.”

Two clicks later he was on her website. The heading promised reliable and
expert legal services. Takamäki thought the photo of the smiling Lind in a gray suit looked classy. Her office was on Dagmar Street in Töölö.

Her
bio said that Lind was born in 1973 and graduated from law school in 1995. She became a member of the Lawyers Association in 1999. Takamäki wondered why her previous employer wasn’t mentioned, especially since it was a large firm. Maybe she really did have something to hide.

Takamäki scrolled down and read that Lind’s hobbies were traveling, the outdoors, and
culinary arts. He looked at the photo again and thought that the woman must really love the outdoors, because food clearly wasn’t her biggest passion.

* * *

Joutsamo sat at her desk once again. In Police Academy ads, the Violent Crimes Unit was depicted as a place for heroes, and the photos showed flashing lights and big police action. In reality, life in the crime unit was totally different; a lot of the time it meant menial office work.

The sergeant
sifted through the night’s crime reports. Friday night into Saturday had again been busy. Eight cars were burglarized in Lauttasaari; thieves smashed the side windows with a hammer and took electronics and anything else of value they could get their hands on.

An apartment stairwell in Kumpula was smeared with fecal material
. A daycare center in Herttoniemi was burglarized, leaving bloody stains on the glass from the perpetrator’s hands. Joutsamo contemplated how both cases would be easy to solve if the police had access to a national DNA registry. It would’ve been helpful in Korpivaara’s case as well.

Closing time at downtown restaurants and bar
s had seen a few squabbles that fortunately resulted in no serious injuries. There were dozens of other incidents: at 2:30 A.M., in Oulunkylӓ suburb, a man in his late twenties took a baseball bat and smashed the headlights, windows, and hood of the car driven by of a group of teenagers who had taunted and threatened the man’s younger brother. The man ended up in jail for destruction of property and terroristic threats. Joutsamo wasn’t surprised to find out that the “baseball man” was a hang-around member of the Skulls, a motorcycle gang that was heavily involved in the Helsinki narcotics trade.

But that case would be
investigated by the Patrol Unit rather than the Violent Crimes, since the man attacked a car, not a person.

Joutsamo’s day had begun with a
typical “grandma” gig. An eighty-two-year-old female hadn’t answered her phone. Her daughter had gone to the apartment and found her mother dead in the bathtub. The police had been notified at eight in the morning.

Joutsamo, who came to work at nine,
had started her day by going to the apartment on Tehdas Street and determined the death was accidental. The woman’s naked body hung over the bathtub ledge and she had a severe head trauma. The tub had water in it, so it seemed obvious that the woman had slipped and hit her head while trying to get into the tub. Lucky for the other tenants in the building, the faucet was turned off, and the building avoided extensive water damage. Joutsamo had completed the cause of death report.

She also made sure the documents for
Korpivaara’s imprisonment were ready. Takamäki would come to Pasila in the afternoon.

Suhonen stepped in
to their shared office and threw his leather jacket over the back of his chair. He was wearing jeans and a black sweater.

“Hey,” Joutsamo said. “You’re late.”

Suhonen was the other VCU detective on duty for the weekend. Their shift went from nine in the morning to nine in the evening. Suhonen only took weekend shifts in extreme circumstances. This time it was on a bet he lost to Kulta. A month ago he had played Tetris on his work computer. Kulta asked how good he was, and Suhonen bragged that he was at least better than Kulta. Suhonen bet him fifty euros, thinking Kulta wouldn’t accept the bet, and threw in a weekend work shift. Suhonen was confident he would win, and of course he lost.

“Sorry,” Suhonen said, and Joutsamo noticed his tired eyes and slightly puffy face.

“Were you at a bar last night?”

“Yu
p.”

“Work-related?”

“Nope, off-duty.”

“Were you out late?”

“Pretty late,” Suhonen replied and turned his computer on. “But don’t worry, no need to drag out the Breathalyzer, I already did it downstairs and I’m clean.”

“Well, good,” Joutsamo said.

Sitting at his computer, Suhonen seemed a little glum.